We travel extensively for our work and seldom are the internet options good. After 10 years of trying just about every type of internet connection available we have settled on the principle of always keeping a backup account from another type of provider. None of those providers are satellite.
I'd be really careful of satellite broadband. It's not. With a theoretical round trip (ping) time of more than a half second (600ms!) and real world times closer to 1.2 seconds a simple internet request becomes an exercise in patience. A single complex page load can require as many as 20 of those round trips to finish loading.
You can ignore the satellite providers claims of "acceleration" software to make that round trip faster. With the speed of light already being the speed limit for those signals there is no effective way to speed them up. Most of the accelerator software they offer are just manipulations of your browsers local cache so you effectively store your favorite websites on your own hard drive and load them from there. You can do that yourself without their software.
I have as yet to see a single satellite internet provider that can maintain a Skype connection with any consistent usability. The VOIP protocol requires huge amounts of distributed packets and those packets aren't very tolerant of large discrepancies in their arrival time. 1.2 seconds is an eternity in VOIP. "Whoops we've lost the signal" is a common phrase to every reporter relying on VOIP to report from a remote location. You will probably develop your own more colorful phrases.
On the other hand satellite can provide good single file streaming times to those of us in the southern portions of the United States. You should be able to get something like 1/2 Mbit upload and 1 Mbit download on average if the system isn't overloaded. The advertised bandwidths of 1 Gb are theoretical at best. That would still be a big boost over what you have now I imagine. Be very careful though about just how much data you are getting with your account, unlimited never really means unlimited as real humans understand that term. Those accounts that really offer "unlimited data" often cap your bandwidth after a certain amount of data per day or per month. Those speed caps effectively limit your data despite it being "unlimited". They will also sorely try your patience.
I could say some really bad but true things about some satellite providers here but it wouldn't mean much because they have all gone out of business! New names with the same equipment is the norm in the satellite internet business. Once customer service and reliability sink to the level nobody will do business with the company it collapses and arises out of the ashes with a new name and new promises of huge data, speed and great service. Curiously this cycle is a little longer than the length of a single service contract.
I will say that Hughes is the exception to the boom and fail cycle. I would never do business with Hughes again but they do keep plugging on. It's probably due to their large foreign corporate base and the fact that they own their own satellites.
Sometimes satellite is the
only option. If it is not I would suggest you try your mifi at your new location before making your move to satellite. We've had really good success with using a signal amplifier and a good antenna for broadband cell in very remote situations where others couldn't even get any phone signal.
You will find that any rural internet experience in Arizona is going to be a compromise at best. At worst - we can tell you many horror stories. Verizon is not a good provider but if you can't get a good DSL or Cable connection in our experience they are your best bet in rural Arizona - if you can get a signal.
Heavy Pans
